Jesse R Cougle

Florida State University | FSU · Department of Psychology

This study examined the item- and scale-level functioning of the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale (SAAS) as well as differential functioning by gender using an item response theory (IRT) analysis. SAAS data collected from 840 college students were analyzed. A graded response model was used to analyze the 16 items comprising the SAAS. The measure was...

Objective: Appearance concerns are a core feature of multiple psychiatric disorders (i.e., body dysmorphic disorder, eating disorders, and social anxiety disorders). Individuals with these concerns commonly engage in appearance-related safety behaviors (ARSB), behaviors intended to avoid, prevent, or manage the negative evaluation of one’s physical...

Individuals elevated in distress intolerance (DI) may engage in dysfunctional behavioral strategies to cope with their distress. One behavioral strategy that may be related to DI is appearance related safety behavior (ARSB; i.e., maladaptive behavior that seeks to mitigate the feared consequences of the negative evaluation of appearance). We examin...

Objective: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a prevalent and debilitating psychiatric disorder that is associated with impairments in functioning and detrimental outcomes such as suicide, poor physical quality of life (QOL), and overall mental health. The goal of the present study was to examine the past year comorbidities of DSM-5 SAD among a large...

Appearance-related safety behaviors (ARSBs) have been identified as a key mechanistic target in individuals with elevated appearance concerns, social anxiety symptoms, and body dissatisfaction. The aim of the present study was to experimentally test the effect of fading these behaviors in individuals with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), social anxi...

Background Recent research has found a strong link between loneliness and social anxiety above and beyond other psychological constructs. Given these strong relationships, the present study sought to determine if mechanisms that maintain social anxiety may also play a role in loneliness. Specifically, the present study used two samples to explore t...

Cannabis use disorder (CUD) is increasing in the United States, yet, specific neural mechanisms of CUD are not well understood. Disordered substance use is characterized by heightened drug cue incentive salience, which can be measured using the late positive potential (LPP), an event‐related potential (ERP) evoked by motivationally significant stim...

Concerns about physical appearance are a salient feature of several psychiatric conditions, and various self-report-based measures of appearance concerns have been developed for different disorders. An important question, with implications for understanding comorbidity and processes underlying it, is whether these different measures may in fact be...

Objective: Psychiatric disorders have been linked to poor social functioning, including deficits in relationship satisfaction. Treatments have shown strong effectiveness in reducing clinical symptoms for a range of disorders, though less is known of the effects disorder-focused treatments have on relationship satisfaction. Methods: The present stud...

Background: The prevalence of cannabis use in the US has increased within the past two decades. Moreover, cannabis use disorder (CUD) is associated with significant disability, but the underlying neural mechanisms of CUD are unclear. Distress intolerance (DI), a psychological risk factor for CUD, may confer risk in part via impaired inhibitory con...

Cannabis use disorder (CUD) and frequency of use are highly related to social anxiety disorder (SAD). With updates to diagnostic criteria of psychiatric disorders and recent changes in cannabis laws, the present study sought to explore the relationships between cannabis use, CUD, and social anxiety in a large nationally representative sample of ind...

Recent experimental evidence has found that appearance related safety behaviors (i.e., practices meant to avoid a perceived feared outcome) likely play a crucial role in maintaining symptoms of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). The present study sought to determine if these behaviors predicted BDD symptom severity following treatment. Participants (N...

Background Social anxiety is thought to be maintained by habitual safety behaviors, actions undertaken to avoid some feared outcome. Safety behaviors may act as a risk factor for the persistence of social anxiety symptoms after treatment completion, though this has not been investigated. We examined the impact of posttreatment safety behavior frequ...

Background and objectives Loneliness is an important factor in mental and physical health. People with social anxiety disorder (SAD) often report high levels of loneliness, which may be maintained by difficulties with intimacy. Building Closer Friendships (BCF) is a technology-based intervention we developed to reduce loneliness through reducing fe...

PurposeSocial anxiety disorder (SAD) is among the most highly prevalent and debilitating psychiatric disorders within the US population, but SAD has gone relatively unnoticed within the US veteran population. Preliminary research has demonstrated that SAD is related to decreased mental and physical functioning as well as posttraumatic stress disord...

Background Appearance importance is a core transdiagnostic construct that has been identified in the maintenance of body-image pathology that has primarily been measured through self-report questionnaires.Methods The Appearance Preference Task (APT) is a 33-item computerized forced-choice task designed to measure appearance importance. In Study 1,...

Objective: Submissive behavior is associated with significant impairment and negative life outcomes. The goal of the present study was to determine the transdiagnostic nature of submissive behavior by observing its association with internalizing symptoms (i.e., social anxiety, depression, and worry) and distress intolerance. Additionally, we sough...

Despite its frequent use in research studies, the self-report version of the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale modified for Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD-YBOCS-SR) is yet to be formally validated. The present investigation sought to examine the psychometric properties of the BDD-YBOCS-SR across three different samples. In Study 1 ( N = 847), we...

Background Individuals with appearance concerns may engage in maladaptive appearance-related safety behaviours aimed at checking, hiding or fixing perceived flaws in their appearance. Aims This investigation examined the psychometric properties of a newly developed measure of appearance-related safety behaviours across three different studies. Me...

Background and objectives Perfectionism has important implications for self-worth, personal standards, and psychopathology. The aim of this study was to test the efficacy of a novel two-week, computerized, exposure-based treatment for perfectionism (ETP). Methods Seventy-one university students with elevated perfectionism were randomized to either...

The past two decades have seen an increase in the number of psychotherapy clinical trials that were adequately powered to compare clinical outcomes across different racial and ethnic groups. Reviews have concluded that outcomes are generally equivalent, though there is still widespread skepticism of how these therapies perform in diverse population...

Despite the availability of well-established and efficacious treatments for social anxiety disorder, most socially anxious individuals do not seek treatment and those who do often suffer for years before seeking treatment. A more comprehensive understanding of the factors related to treatment seeking for social anxiety disorder is needed. This stud...

Individuals with social anxiety disorder commonly engage in safety behaviors (SBs), which are behavioral and cognitive strategies employed in an effort to avoid or decrease the likelihood of a feared threat outcome and decrease anxiety in social situations. These behaviors are thought to be dysfunctional and play a key role in contemporary models o...

Background Conceptualizations of body image-related disorders suggest that targeting safety behaviors (SB) may help reduce eating disorder (ED) symptoms. No consensus exists regarding the mechanism underlying the relationship between SBs and ED symptoms, though one hypothesized construct is overvaluation of appearance. Aims The aim of the current...

Objective: The construct of perfectionism has long been related to Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD), though research has not considered how OCPD could distinguish individuals with elevated perfectionism. The aim of this study was to evaluate clinical differences between those with and without OCPD in a sample of individuals with el...

Background Social support has been found to be a key correlate of many psychiatric disorders including several mood and anxiety disorders. However, research on social support is largely investigated in individual disorders, despite the high co-occurrence of these diagnoses, and has typically relied on pre-DSM-5 diagnostic criteria. Additionally, di...

Objective: Given increasing rates of daily cannabis use and Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD) in the United States, it is imperative to understand CUD mechanisms in high-risk groups. Cannabis users with high distress intolerance (DI) are at elevated risk for severe and chronic CUD, but neural mechanisms linking CUD and DI are unknown. Cross-sectional da...

Objectives: Suicidal ideation (SI) nearly always precedes lethal suicide attempts. Anger may play a role in SI, but this appears to vary by gender and nuances in this relationship are unclear. Method: We investigated whether levels of (a) anger and (b) SI vary by gender, (c) the cross-sectional relationship between anger and SI, and (d) if gende...

A number of psychiatric disorders, including body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and social anxiety disorder, are characterized by heightened appearance concerns and increased cognitive and perceptual biases toward one’s own physical appearance. In the present study, we examined individual differences in self-reported...

Background Social support has been identified as a protective factor against suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Research has not conclusively identified the component of social support most implicated in suicidal thoughts and behaviors: 1) frequency of social contact or 2) closeness of relationships. This study examined the relationships between thes...

Background: Social anxiety has been associated with higher levels of and more problematic marijuana use. Research suggests that safety behaviors may play a role in the development and maintenance of marijuana problems. However, the safety behaviors that are most commonly associated with social anxiety have not been investigated, nor has the potenti...

Objective: Hostility is a transdiagnostic phenomenon that can have a profound negative impact on interpersonal functioning and psychopathological severity. Evidence suggests that cognitive bias modification for interpretation bias (CBM-I) potentially reduces hostility. However, stringent efficacy studies in people with clinical levels of hostility...

Objective Prevalence of regular cannabis use and cannabis use disorder (CUD) have increased in the past two decades, but treatment-seeking is low and extant brief interventions do not target causal risk factors implicated in etiological models of addiction. Elevated distress intolerance (DI) is one risk factor that has been empirically linked with...

Background: Most measures of anxious avoidance are limited to disorder-specific mechanisms and ignore the measurement of courage/approach responding in confronting fearful situations. Aims: The purpose of the present study was to construct and validate a self-report assessment of the tendency towards avoidant or approach responding in fearful situ...

Few studies have examined indices of change in treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). The current study evaluated within- and between-session trajectories of fear, disgust, and urge to wash in exposure and response prevention (ERP) for contamination-based OCD and tested whether change in these indices were associated with treatment outc...

Background: High rates of suicidal ideation in those with social anxiety disorder (SAD) have been attributed to feelings of thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness, but most work has been in non-clinical samples. We assessed the contributions of thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness to suicidal ideation severity, over cli...

Pathological worry is characterized by an inability to distract or disengage from worry, and this uncontrollability is the defining feature of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). The present study assessed a novel computerized strategy that targets these attention difficulties. Worry Disengagement Training (WDT), which involves alternating between...

Objective: Cognitive models of social anxiety disorder propose that maladaptive safety behaviors (SBs; i.e., behaviors intended to avoid, prevent, or manage threat) play an important maintaining role in the disorder. Though targeting these behaviors for elimination is one component of contemporary cognitive-behavioral therapies for social anxiety,...

Background: Cannabis use disorder (CUD) has been linked to personality disorders (PDs) and interpersonal problems, though these relationships have been understudied. We examined PDs and social support associated with cannabis dependence and how it may be distinguishable from alcohol dependence on these indices in a large representative sample. Me...

Individuals with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) often report engaging in repetitive behaviors aimed at reducing feelings of imperfection anchored to their appearance. “Not just right” experiences (NJREs) and incompleteness (INC) are constructs related to perfectionism that have traditionally been studied in obsessive-compulsive disorder, though rec...

Objective: Appearance-related safety behaviors (SBs; e.g., mirror checking, grooming) have been implicated in body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), eating disorders, and social anxiety disorder. The proposed project aimed to extend previous research efforts by exploring the experimental effects of reducing engagement in appearance-related SBs on appeara...

Distress intolerance (DI) represents the perceived inability to withstand and manage upsetting emotional and physical internal experiences. Recent research suggests that DI is relevant to a number of clinical disorders; however the mechanisms underlying the association between DI and internalizing symptoms are unclear. It may be that DI is primaril...

Computerized interpretation bias modification (IBM) programs show promise for the treatment of anxiety disorders, though they have rarely been compared to active treatments. The goal of the present study was to compare the efficacy of IBM to progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) for the treatment of social anxiety disorder (SAD). Sixty-four participa...

Hoarding disorder (HD) is a persistent and severe psychiatric condition in which individuals are unable to discard possessions, which results in considerable clutter. Individuals who hoard often endorse interpersonal difficulties and social isolation. However, little research has examined mechanisms that may help to explain this relationship. One p...

Objective: The current study extended upon previous research efforts by evaluating the utility and feasibility of an 8-session Internet-based interpretation bias modification (IBM) training protocol targeting evaluation- and appearance-related threat biases characteristic of the disorder compared to a progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) condition f...

Contamination fear and washing compulsions are among the most common symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Though these symptoms have traditionally been viewed as being driven by a desire to avoid harm, recent research has highlighted the importance of feelings of incompleteness (INC) or not-just right experiences (NJREs) in this symptom...

Cannabis use is prevalent but only a minority of regular users develop cannabis use disorder (CUD); thus, CUD risk identification among current cannabis users is vital for targeted intervention development. Existing data suggest that high distress intolerance (DI), an individual difference reflective of the ability to withstand negative affect, is...

Individuals with appearance concerns engage in “safety behaviors” (SBs) aimed at checking, hiding, fixing, and reducing threat associated with their perceived flaw in appearance. Appearance-related SBs are important in contemporary accounts of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), though they are also relevant to social anxiety (SAD) and eating disorders...

Interpretation Bias Modification (IBM) interventions have been effective in reducing negative interpretation biases theorized to underlie depressive psychopathology. Although these programs have been highlighted as potential short-term interventions for depression, mixed evidence has been found for their effects on depressive symptoms. There is a n...

Disgust is a universal emotion that has received recent empirical attention for its potential role in various forms of psychopathology. We conducted two studies using varying methods to explore the relationship between disgust propensity, a construct related to obsessive-compulsive symptomatology, and symptoms of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). Stu...

“Not just right” experiences (NJREs) are uncomfortable sensations of incompleteness linked to obsessive–compulsive disorder; however, NJREs may be transdiagnostic and play a role in eating pathology. The current study examined relations between NJREs and eating pathology in undergraduate students. Participants (n = 248) completed self-report and be...

Prevalence of cannabis use is increasing, but many regular users do not develop cannabis use disorder (CUD); thus, CUD risk identification among current users is vital for targeted intervention development. Existing data suggest that high distress intolerance (DI), an individual difference reflective of the ability to tolerate negative affect, may...

Background: Previous research suggests that computerized interpretation bias modification (IBM) techniques may be useful for modifying thoughts and behaviours relevant to eating pathology; however, little is known about the utility of IBM for decreasing specific eating disorder (ED) symptoms (e.g. bulimia, drive for thinness). Aims: The current...

Background: Pain interference is associated with substance use, but has yet to be considered as a potential indicator of SUDs among substance users. We sought to examine whether moderate and high pain interference would confer risk for SUDs in ever and weekly users. Methods: Using data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Relate...

The most common symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder is contamination fear. Feelings of contamination can be provoked through contact with a physical contaminant, referred to as contact contamination (CC), as well as in the absence of one, referred to as mental contamination (MC). Prior research indicates that CC and MC are distinct, and MC may...

Distress intolerance (DI) is an important individual difference reflective of the inability to endure aversive affective states and is relevant to multiple clinical populations, but underlying emotional processing mechanisms remain unclear. The current study used eye-tracking to examine biased attention towards emotional stimuli at baseline and in...

Distress intolerance (DI), a trait-like individual difference reflective of the inability to endure aversive affective states, is relevant to multiple forms of psychopathology, but its relations to theoretically relevant neurobiological systems have received little attention. Altered cognitive control-related neurobiology has been theorized to unde...

Research indicates that physical and sexual abuse are associated with increased suicide risk; however, these associations have not been investigated among firefighters-an occupational group that has been shown to be at elevated suicide risk. This study examined whether physical and sexual abuse histories are associated with (a) career suicide ideat...

Distress tolerance (DT) is a transdiagnostic construct linked to multiple psychiatric disorders. We conducted three studies using different methods to investigate the relationship between DT and body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). Study 1 found a significant relationship between low DT and more severe BDD symptoms in an adult community sample (N=81). I...

Interpretation Bias Modification (IBM) is gaining attention in the literature as an intervention that alters cognitive biases and reduces associated symptoms. Forty, primarily college-aged, non-treatment seeking adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) were randomly assigned to receive either IBM targeting hostile interpretation bias (IBM-H) or...

Individuals with Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) have a tendency to interpret ambiguous information in a negative or threatening manner. These individuals also report ‘not just right’ experiences (NJREs), or uncomfortable feelings of incompleteness/imperfection, which may represent a vulnerability factor distinct from interpretation biases (IBs) in...

Distress tolerance (DT) is a transdiagnostic construct linked to multiple psychiatric disorders. Identification of behaviors and attitudes associated with DT may provide helpful information regarding the construct and provide a clearer lens through which to view the interpersonal difficulties of individuals with low DT. Two studies were conducted t...

A number of studies have reported associations between pain and anger in samples with chronic pain, but research has mostly overlooked associations between pain and anger in those with problematic anger. The present study explored associations between pain severity and a variety of anger and hostility constructs in a sample seeking anger treatment...

This chapter reviews issues related to the dissemination of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), including barriers and potential solutions. Survey of psychologists who treat eating disorders found that 39% endorsed CBT as their primary treatment approach, while a majority of the sample indicated that they used CBT techniques “always” or “often”. An...

Background: Disgust is thought to play a prominent role in multiple anxiety disorders and fears, including spider phobia, though little attention has been given to specific treatment strategies that may be effective for multiple disgust-based fears. Aims: In the present study, we evaluated contamination-focused exposure as a potential transdiagn...

Due to the complex and heterogeneous nature of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), movement toward multimodal assessment has become necessary to more precisely understand the nature of the disorder and interrelations between symptom clusters. Thus, the present study utilized large undergraduate samples (total N = 800) to test the validity of six i...

Background: Research suggests an important relationship between interpretation bias, hostility and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Extant literature has yet to examine hostile interpretation bias in clinically depressed samples; the current studies sought to fill this gap. Method: Study 1 participants included undergraduates who met criteria fo...

Objective: Research on the progression from substance use to dependence typically relies on lifetime retrospective reports of dependence among ever users. We sought to evaluate probability and correlates of dependence among recent (past-year) weekly users of alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, and cocaine through cross-sectional and prospective analyses....

Intolerance of uncertainty (IU) is a transdiagnostic construct associated with several anxiety and related disorders. Three studies were conducted to explore the potential relationship between IU and body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). Study 1 revealed a positive relationship between IU and BDD symptoms above symptoms of anxiety and depression in an un...

Low levels of risk-taking behavior have been associated with anxiety, but variables that influence risk-averse decision-making are not well-understood. Given that uncertainty is inherent to risk-taking behavior, individual differences in the appraisal of uncertainty (e.g., intolerance of uncertainty (IU)) may affect risk-taking behavior. However, n...

Hostile interpretation biases are central to the development and maintenance of anger, yet have been inconsistently assessed. The Word Sentence Association Paradigm (WSAP) was used to develop a new measure of hostile interpretation biases, the WSAP-Hostility. Study 1 examined the factor structure and internal consistency of the WSAP-Hostility, as w...

Generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive–compulsive disorder are defined by chronic intrusive thoughts. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the relationship between cognitive (attentional control) and motivational (negative urgency) mechanisms potentially underlying worry and obsessions. Participants (N = 526) completed an online questio...

Combat is a risk factor for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD); however, less is known about how exposure to combat in early adulthood may contribute to the development of PTSD as the individual ages. Prior exposure to trauma may "sensitize" people to respond more intensely to subsequent stressors. Further, aging initiates new challenges that may...

Pathological worry and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) have been linked with low distress tolerance (DT), although questions remain including whether this association exists independent of depression and comorbidity, the directionality of the relationship between worry and DT, and DT's nonredundancy with other worry-relevant variables (i.e., emo...

‘Not Just Right’ Experiences (NJREs), or uncomfortable sensations associated with the immediate environment not feeling ‘right,’ are thought to contribute to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptomatology. The literature suggests that NJREs are experienced across sensory modalities; however, existing in vivo measures have been restricted to vis...

Hoarding is characterized by emotionally-reinforced saving behaviors, which often combine with excessive acquisition to give rise to clutter, distress, and impairment. Despite the central role emotional processes are thought to play in hoarding, very little research has directly examined this topic. There is suggestive evidence linking hoarding wit...

Hostility has emerged as an important predictor of smoking cessation difficulties, though the mechanisms underlying the hostility and smoking relationship are poorly understood. Further, research has yet to explore relations between hostile interpretation biases and different aspects of smoking behavior. In the present study, current daily smokers...

Research has implicated problematic anger in multiple smoking outcomes, including nicotine dependence and difficulties with cessation. However, the mechanisms underlying the role of anger in smoking behavior and cessation difficulties remain unclear. The current study examined associations between different facets of anger with smoking motives, pro...

This study examined the unique and interactive roles of anger experience and expression in suicidality (suicidal ideation, plans, and attempts) in a large, nationally representative sample. Participants included 5692 adults from the National Comorbidity Survey-Replication, a nationally representative survey. Anger experience was assessed through a...

Correlational research suggests that smoking increases risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), though such research by nature cannot rule out third variable explanations for this relationship. The present study used an analogue trauma film design to experimentally test the effects of nicotine on the occurrence of intrusive memories. Fifty-fou...

Research indicates that disgust propensity (DP; the tendency to respond with disgust) and disgust sensitivity (DS; the tendency to experience disgust as aversive) are differentially correlated and predictive of specific anxiety disorder symptoms. Based on this distinction, we sought to investigate the relationship of disgust indices to specific obs...

Objective: Recently, researchers have called for therapeutic applications of behavioral primes (Shalev & Bargh, 2011). We evaluated whether courageous approach behavior might be facilitated through priming in a sample of spider fearful women. Method: Undergraduate student women reporting elevated spider fear (N = 33, Age mean = 18.88) were recru...